Keep up with your New Years’ resolution to make healthy lifestyle changes!

Blue Cross Blue Shield is preparing to kick off the next round of Win by Losing, their weight-loss challenge designed specifically for BCBSM group customers. Since fall 2009, and throughout six rounds of the Win by Losing competition, participants from across the state of Michigan have discovered the benefits of taking personal responsibility for their health. Collectively, the teams have lost more than 46,000 pounds, more than 23 tons.

The eighth round of competition begins on Feb. 25, with registration opening on Feb. 18. In the next few weeks, BCBSM will be contacting group customers about the contest and providing them with all of the details they’ll need to know to register and get their team started.

First health system in Michigan to commit to performance-based reimbursement; The Physician Alliance also a key partner

St. John Providence Health System (SJPHS), and its five acute care hospitals across southeast Michigan, is the first health system in the state to partner with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan on a new performance-based reimbursement model.

Under the agreement, the SJPHS hospitals will commit to achieving mutually-designed standards for successful patient outcomes in exchange for higher reimbursement. The agreement enables an organized system of health care by including The Physician Alliance as a key partner. The Physician Alliance is a 2,300-member physician organization that recently joined with SJPHS to form Partners in Care, a physician-health system entity created to manage the health of populations in the future.

Moving away from the traditional fee-for-service approach that is behind the huge growth of health care costs over the last decade, the agreement between BCBSM and St. John Providence on pay-for-performance contracting sets a new standard for how Michigan hospitals are paid by insurers.

This agreement truly breaks new ground. It leverages health insurance dollars not to encourage high volumes of services but rather high quality of care as measured by the successful treatment of hospital patients, said Susan Barkell, BCBSM senior vice president for Health Care Value. This is the first outcomes-based reimbursement arrangement between Blue Cross and a major Michigan hospital system. We recognize the leadership and foresight of St. John Providence for partnering with Blue Cross on it.

This kind of partnership with Blue Cross Blue Shield is exactly what we envisioned when St. John Providence Health System and The Physician Alliance formed Partners in Care in October, said Patricia Maryland, president and CEO of SJPHS. We are pleased that Blue Cross Blue Shield endorses the commitment we and our physician partners have made to a new era in health care that focuses on helping patients manage a lifetime of healthy choices and fewer episodes of illness.

Under the agreement, BCBSM will support the funding of infrastructure improvements necessary to better integrate care services between The Physician Alliance and the five hospitals under Partners in Care. Milestones will be established jointly between St. John Providence and BCBSM to ensure infrastructure work continues along with funding until 2013, when St. John Providence will include a performance-based reimbursement model in its next contract with BCBSM.

The agreement recognizes St. John Providence Partners in Care as a leading, innovative and clinically integrated health care organization that will be accountable for the delivery of patient-centric, coordinated, high-quality and compassionate health care.

This agreement integrates physician organizations and hospitals in ways that create a better system of health care that has the patient front-and-center throughout the care process, said Dr. Thomas Simmer, BCBSM senior vice president and Chief Medical Officer. We are building the future of Michigan health care with our partners at St. John Providence, and we encourage other hospital systems and physician groups to join us.

St. John Providence is part of Ascension Health, the nation’s largest Catholic and nonprofit health system. St. John Providence’s five acute-care hospitals include: